Number One... Engage!

I haven't blogged in a few days. As any educator knows, there's never enough time but never is that more apparent than the end of the year.

So... engaging students. I would call it the number two issue in teaching, number one being motivating students. As someone originally trained as a history teacher, I feel like I have a pretty good perspective on this one. I've long said that if you asked a group of adults what subject they found the most boring in school, most of them would say history. Come on - who wants to learn about a bunch of dead white guys? If you were a twelve-year-old girl with neon hair, would you be thrilled about Hammurabi?

We've spent this school year addressing the Big Question (eggghhhh.... buzzword), "Why should I care about history?" For those of you who have read my earlier posts, you know about my Historical Person Project. The heart of this is finding a way to make "old stuff" relevant.

So... Hammurabi. Mesopotamia. Who cares? Well, hopefully everyone, since these days Mesopotamia is known as Iraq. Got a relative or neighbor over there? Engaging students starts with respecting the fact that they won't care unless you shed some light on the relevance.

For another subject area, much has been said these past years about NASA and whether or not it makes sense to fund the space program when people are starving here on Earth. One look at the Velcro on a pair of sneakers brings a beautiful opportunity to talk about all of the terrestrial items that branch off of space program research. My students are currently exploring Newton's laws by building paper rockets that we're shooting off with compressed air. They are definitely engaged.

Why Standardized Tests Are Stupid and Make Me Want to Club Baby Seals With Dead Kittens

Harsh title? Maybe. I feel harsh right now.

This week, my students are taking a particular flavor of standardized test. I hate standardized tests. I UNDERSTAND WHY WE HAVE THEM, so please don’t e-mail me and explain it. I understand why we have urban decay, a hole in the ozone layer, and teen smoking—that doesn’t mean I think they’re swell.

This one day, the students are taking one test on one particular educational strand. The evidence is overwhelming that one assessment is never a good measure of… well, pretty much anything. (Don’t believe it? See Wormeli, O’Connor, Stiggins, etc., etc., etc…).

Did they stay up late watching the big game/TV show/Internet whatever?

Did they eat breakfast? A healthy one?

Are their parents in the middle of a divorce?

Are the test questions and multiple-guess choices well-worded, or were they pushed through as-is because the company who made them had time and budget constraints and couldn’t/wouldn’t/won’t go back and make much-needed repairs?

Did another class forget to walk quietly through the hallways as they passed my group (probably because they, too, have been in testing and, as a result, have WAY more excess energy than they usually have)?

Should I go on?

How about this: when I was a child, we took the California Achievement Test (despite the fact that we lived in New Hampshire… don’t even get me going…). I could not tell you what my scores were like.

Have I measured up to them?

Should I care if I measured up to them?


[Note for PETA, NSPCA, etc. - I would never--nor would I advocate anyone else--club baby seals with anything, let alone dead kittens. That is the point--that things have gotten so out of hand that I am prompted to act in a way that is completely contrary to my nature. Stop taking yourselves so seriously and go save the whales, ok?]

They All Grow Up

About a half hour ago, a group of eighth graders from my school left on their class trip. They were my second sixth grade class. Next year, they will be cruising the halls of the high school, thinking about "what they want to do with their lives" and longing to apply for driving permits.

Where does all the time go?

As I reflect back on almost twenty years in education (I started subbing the 1990-1991 school year... at the high school from which I had just graduated...), I think about all of the faces I have seen, all of the laughter I have heard. I've wiped away a tear or two--theirs as well as mine.

I came to education the hard way, learning the ropes as I went, an aid in many classrooms. I watched truly inspiring teaching, moderately mediocre teaching, and downright awful teaching. I learned how to relate to kids, often by doing it the wrong way, sometimes by stumbling across the True Path.

I imagine a bizarre cross between This is Your Life, A Christmas Carol, and Dante's Commedia, a phantasmal string of young people gathered facing me. How many of them are smiling?

Empathizing With Student Apathy

I am writing this post as I procrastinate about getting ready for a workshop I really don't want to attend, on a topic I do not believe in, having not finished a unit plan in a format I have no desire to follow...

So let's talk about student apathy.

There has been much discussion as of late (ok... the last 100+ years) about how to motivate and/or engage (they go hand-in-hand, don't they?) students in the American Educational System (or the Ukrainian, British, or Djiboutian, for that matter...). There are many in education--particularly at the secondary level--who feel that students should walk into class on the first day, Athena-like: sprung forth fully formed from their previous learning environment, "knowing what to do" to be students. The amount of time spent finger pointing these days (and usually in a downward direction) is ridiculous, insulting, and completely counterproductive. Educators have plenty of battles to fight without fighting each other.

To quote an unattributable quote, students won't care what you know until they know that you care. To paraphrase that, students won't care what you're saying until you've demonstrated that you're worth listening to/respecting, etc., etc., etc... Maybe your students "aren't demonstrating the skills that they should already have mastered at this level" because you are lame. To be less harsh, maybe you haven't gone through the necessary process of clearly stating and--yes--reviewing the expectations that you so boldly claim to be prerequisite. Sit in a faculty meeting some time. Could there be a more fully-prepared group of people in terms of "demonstrating the necessary skills at this level"? How many are engaged in off-topic side conversations? How many are correcting papers? How many are feigning attention but are really thinking about the luscious cup of coffee (or whatever) they're going to savor on the ride home? [note: I'm not even talking about a lame faculty meeting, but rather one that actually does have value!]

Sound like your classroom?

Some Antics

Short entry today... hopefully some of you readers will plump it up with some comments...

I love language. I love words. As a graduation award, the English teachers at my high school named me an honorary member of the English Department. I love that, once upon a time, words had true power, true meaning.

I like to think they still do.

This leads me to sometimes drive others crazy. The way statements are worded--particularly policy-type statements-- is something I will fight tooth-and-nail about. In a non-educational example (kind of), regardless of your political views, no one can convince me that George W. Bush didn't know the implications when he declared, "This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile." The word crusade has an awful lot of resonance in the Middle East. A graduate of Philips Andover and Yale didn't know that? Poppycock.

In education, we are awash in buzzwords. There are plenty of websites out there with lists and lists of them, so I won't bore you with another one (although the Illinois Loop one is pretty funny...). Some of these buzzwords do have meaning, but some are just... well...

poppycock.

Morale (or... The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves)

I love my school. I've said it before--my school is the jewel in the crown. People walk through our doors and just feel the positive energy. Those of you who know anything about middle schools are aware there there are plenty of substances that could be dripping from the walls; the fact that we're talking about positive energy is definitely an anomaly.

So what makes for good (nay--great!) morale? Well, back in the day, I worked at another school with great morale. There were similarities to my current school; the staff was like a family, we had common outlooks but with enough variety to spurn healthy debate and competition. We LOVED pulling pranks on one another. In short, it was a place of surprise and wonder, where every day the ride in found you thinking, "I wonder what hi-jinks will ensue today."

As educators, we are walking targets. Most of us wear our hearts on our sleeves. We have GINORMOUS egos. (Think not? How many other jobs absolutely depend on your belief that you will walk in every day and change the world?). Any parent/child/community member/news agency can say pretty much whatever they want about us--individually or collectively--and privacy laws and just plain ethics require that we make no response. Don't even get me started about the Sisyphusian initiatives--local or otherwise--like NCLB. The very nature of teaching is giving; it's pretty easy to become depleted rather rapidly.

Personally--and rather selfishly--I recharge my batteries at the kids' expense. That's right--I said it. It had to be said. Your innocent little chidlers are coming to my classroom and I'm feeding off of their wonder, their enthusiasm, their love of life. I've already beat this horse.

At the end of the day, morale is about feeling appreciated for who you are and what you do. It's not about ego-stroking or butt-patting ("Look, Mommy! I went poopy!")--just being recognized.

Sometimes You Eat the Bear, or... Knowing When to Quit

I'm not a quitter. At least, I don't perceive myself to be one. I'm a fighter, sometimes when I shouldn't be. I'm an idealist. One of my favorite teachers described me as being, "like Kurt Vonnegut--you like putting sour coatings on sugar pills." I'm not talking about fighting just for the sake of fighting. I'm talking about saying that there's an elephant in the middle of the room... because there is.

Rage, rage... rage...

So, when is quitting not quitting? Live to fight another day, and all that. (No, Virginia, I'm not talking about quitting my job, or quitting teaching, or walking off the planet...). I guess I'm talking about picking your battles, but leaving the battlefield in such a way that the very act of leaving becomes the attack. More rambling, James... way to increase your readership...

The Point: with all that we are asked to do, sometimes we need to be willing to remove our name from something as a statement of our disapproval. We are--each of us--a gift to the world. I won't quote that often-misquoted (or mis-attributed)-quote about Our Deepest Fear, but you get the idea. I'm not talking about taking your ball home and pouting--that's just being a whining whiner who whines. I'm talking about recognizing that there are only so many hours in the day, and we have only so much to give. If your giving in a given situation is taking more from you than it is producing...

Walk away.

Yalla, Yalla!

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I would say that I do not believe in astrology.

Of course, I would, in the same situation, say that I do not believe in a lot of things. I am of two minds on many things. Am I a fence straddler? No. I just prefer to not close doors. Possibilities are way more fun than then... definitities. (Shakespeare made up a lot of words. Why can't I?)

Back to astrology, and to the title of this entry. I am a Gemini. A born dualist. One of my favorite high school teachers once made the observation that I am like Kurt Vonnegut; I "like to put sour coatings on sugar pills." I like to see two (or more) sides to everything. The cubists really work for me. So... (digress much?) I've been digging some YouTube videos of one of my favorite bands, Cracker. They have a song called "Yalla Yalla" that is written (in songwriter David Lowery's own words) as an, "exploration and a celebration of a certain kind of bravado and swagger one finds in the speech of soldiers. I find it nicely matches the kind of swagger often exhibited by rock, blues and hip hop singers" (read the blurb below the video).

As YouTube is set up to function like Google, Amazon, etc, etc, etc, it steers you to videos based on videos you have already watched ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen..."). In my case, it lead me to a song by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros called... "Yalla Yalla". Strummer's song (and--for those of you just joining this broadcast--they are two unique songs) is a bit on the electronica/pop-groove side, while the Cracker song is full-tilt Rawk 'n Roll.

"Ok, Whitey, what the flip does this have to do with education?"

Well... the very unique yallas got me thinking... Back in the day (and, in some classes, that was/is... um... today, and tomorrow, and the next day...), education was about The Right Answer, also known as the "Guess what I'm thinking!" game. Both of these songs take the Arabic yalla and run with it in very different directions. (And I'm not that ignorant... there are gazillions of songs in Arabic that use the word... I'm talking about two particular English language reinterpretations...)

What if the next time you teach something, you leave your mind wide open to the possibility (yay!) that one of your students is going to come up with an answer that bears no resemblance to what you were expecting (even if--progressive teacher that you are--you were ready for a few "right" answers). An answer that is the Martian version of the answers given by every other student in the room. On first glance, it might even seem like a goof answer, or an "oops... this kid needs way more 'wait time' before answering coherently" answer, or a "note to self: seat this little guy further away from the dry erase board... the fumes are getting to him" answer. Give it a minute (some wait time for... you) . Maybe it's just the cubist genius answer you never expected.

Yalla, yalla!

Why Am I Doing This?

If you're a teacher and you have never asked yourself that question... you're doing it wrong.

I hope I ask myself that question frequently over the life of my career. There are a million things that happen over the course of a typical school day that can drain you, stress you out, drag you through the knothole. I'm not going to say that the students are never on this list, but most of my stress comes from adults.

Don't get me wrong--I love my coworkers. My school is the jewel of our district in part because of the incredibly familial atmosphere amongst the staff. My principal and vice principal? Everyone should be so lucky as to have bosses like them. When it comes right down to it, though, the adult end of the equation is definitely where a majority of the hair-pulling originates. Meetings, paperwork, personality differences... the kids are where the positive energy comes from. That's how the ol' batteries get recharged--the students are the sun for my solar panels.

So why do I teach? I don't teach because I want to be remembered. I do, however, teach for an incredibly selfish reason: I believe with all my heart that I can make a difference. If, in my entire career, I only make a difference in one life, it will have been worth it.

Why are you doing what you're doing?

Self Image

As we progress through the Historical Person Trading Cards, I am reminded of one of my favorite Picasso quotes:

"All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artists as we grow up."

(Having never seen the original source, I'm dubious about the actual wording, but the thought is clearly Picasso...)

Tonight, all of my little cherubs will be hand-drawing four identical 2.5" X 3.5" portraits of their current Historical Person... Them. They. Themselves. However, this task will potentially be a form of torture as, at the ages of 11-13, they've already bitten the evil fruit of self-derision. They "can't draw" or "look stupid" or a thousand other red flags that cue the observation that they're unhappy with their appearance, or at least uncomfortable with it, and/or they have lost the Artist Within.

This... is... tragic.

Read those three words like Captain James... T... Kirk. It will help lessen the pain of realizing that by age 11--possibly earlier--you, too, had let go of the hand of your Artist Within and watched it spin down the toilet drain of Growing Up. I watch beautiful, interesting, amazing, inspiring, heroic children who make me want to reinvent myself a thousand times over every day fall into this insidious snare and it breaks my heart.

What is Growing Up, after all, but conformity? We all need to conform to some extent - to be, in the words of Adrian Belew, a member of the tribe. I prefer, though, to learn the fine art of camouflage. I wear my camo--button up shirt, nice shoes, khaki pants--but underneath it all, I'm... not conforming. Just enough to slip by the security system of The System.

I think one of my great challenges as an educator is to pass that on to my students. It's a contradiction, just this side of hypocrisy. I expect them to line up at the appropriate times. I expect names on papers and pencils sharpened before class, if at all possible, for the love of Pete (and how come Pete gets all the press?). I ask those things to make the transitions of a public institution flow more smoothly, so that there's more time for the Good Stuff.

Or am I just rationalizing my part in the Great Crime?

I Love Parents, Art Cards Also

My last post might have made it seem like I am anti-parent. This is absolutely not the case - I love parents. Parents entrust me with their greatest treasure: their children. I have been blessed with some of the most supportive classroom parents. My point was simply that there is a cultural trend--culture-wide, not just with parents--towards finger-pointing rather than problem solving.

Okay... what I really wanted to post about is a project I'm currently starting with my students. I have done it for three years running now, and it always breeds enthusiasm for history! As a build-up to a huge end-of-the-year research/art project, I have the students troll through their textbooks and find ten historical people who interest them. I'm not interested in why; it could be that the picture in the book looked cool or that they liked that, "the guy was holding a sword." Whatever - they just choose based on their interest.

The next step--the focus of this post--is that they make Historical Person Trading Cards. There is a movement within the art world for Artist Trading Cards; I actually didn't know about that before this year. I was going off of baseball cards, Pokemon cards, Star Wars cards, etc. The class collectively decides on ten facts that each card should include. Usually, they arrive at the basics (DOB/DOD, etc.), plus some interesting side categories.

Tonight's assignment: each student will create a rough draft of a Historical Person Trading Card. The twist is... they are the historical person featured on the card...

More Ramblings

The following is a re-post of some thoughts I left on the NHTLC forum. There were five discussion topics, ranging from digital citizenship and Internet safety topics to "friending" students on Facebook. Here is my blather...

“Is there a difference between the five topics?

My subject line is in no way intended to offend anyone, particularly [the discussion moderator]; I would not want the responsibility of moderating this group of riff-raff!

The point of my post is that these topics all go back to the trend of our culture's gradual transformation (descent?) in its outlook on the role of teachers. In short, we are now expected to not only educate, inspire, prepare, counsel, guide, etc, etc, etc, our students... we are essentially expected to parent them.

At the risk of sounding like a codger (I will be 38 in 3.5 weeks...), things have changed radically since I was a child. When I was a young whipper-snapper, bringing home a less-than-acceptable grade meant a pretty good grilling session with the 'rents. The first question was always either, 'What are YOU doing that has brought about this situation?' or 'What are you NOT doing that has brought about this situation?' Eventually, something MIGHT have come up about potential failings on the teacher's part, but even this would have been balanced out by the expectation that I find a way to make it work; as we go through life, we will all have supervisors that demonstrate failings... and we will still have to meet their approval in the workplace (as much as I HATE the classroom-as-analogue-for-workplace metaphor). This is NO LONGER THE CASE. A growing majority of parents shoot first (i.e. blame the teacher), and don't ask questions... ever. I LOVE many of the parents of many of my students but there is a growing mass of The Other Kind. (But don't even get me started on the topic of non-caring, incompetent teachers... please leave the profession if you are one of them...)

Speaking of shooting, Chris Rock had a great bit about Columbine that comes to mind every time the media latches onto 'cyberbullying' cases. I won't reiterate it here, but essentially he questioned the defense that those kids did what they did because of bullying, or because they didn't have friends, or that the school weren't paying attention (like their parents... while the students were storing munitions and building pipe bombs in the garage...). I FULLY SUPPORT THE IDEA THAT TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS NEED TO LOOK OUT FOR SITUATIONS WHERE STUDENTS ARE GETTING DOWNTRODDEN BY THEIR PEERS. However, I also believe that the current outlook on 'bullying'--cyber or otherwise--has at its roots much of the 'Look at me! I'm a victim!' mentality currently prevalent in our culture (Maury? Jerry? OPRAH?!!). Both victims and villains in these situations are completely sensationalized... leading to more attention-seeking victims and villains... everybody wants their 15 minutes, one way or another.

We SHOULD be friends ('a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard') to our students--compassionate, caring, fellow travelers... we SHOULD NOT be their buddies and hang-out pals... in cyberspace or at the mall...”

"What the world needs now..."

The title of this blog entry is an excerpt from Cracker's song, "Teen Angst" (teachers will recognize it as the end-theme music for the Bill Nye the Science Guy videos; nice job overpricing the DVDs, Disney...), the full line being "What the world needs now / is another folk singer / like I need a hole in my head." Does the world need yet another blog, particularly another blog from a teacher, particularly another blog from... me?

Frankly, the answer to all of the above questions (especially the folk singer one...) is a resounding "NO!" but I endeavor to endeavor anyway. I already write a blog about my independent music work. My readership of about three people seems to enjoy my ramblings on that topic. The dual nature of my life, however, has been nagging for an ed. blog. Add to that nagging force the fact that I am part of the New Hampshire Tech Leader Cohort Program. There are a number of New Hampshire educators establishing their presence in cyberspace. My views tend to be... different from many of theirs, so I thought I would balance out the scales a bit.

To begin with--and to return to my dual nature--I am both a tech addict and a tech hater. Technology, particularly as it applies to/in/with/about education, is just another tool. If you think like I do, you will see the redundantly repetitive redundancy of that last sentence; technology and tool are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. Computer=pencil=cave painting=finger-drawing-in-the-sand. If you survey most science fiction, you will find a major theme of humans vs. technology. The UAW would probably chime in on this as well (though they probably would not discuss their own role in the decline...). Technology of any kind is supposed to be a tool to make our lives easier or somehow better. The shoehorning of technology, as my friend and fellow educator Jason Lees terms it, is a bit ridiculous. Adding tech-related items into classroom lessons just for the sake of adding tech-related items into classroom lessons undermines the integrity of the student/teacher relationship, not to mention our integrity as professionals.

When the US space program began, we did not go out and find greenhorn nerds who we could pour into pre-made astronaut molds--we grabbed experienced pilots. Early American astronauts were successfully able to adapt their knowledge of terrestrial aircraft (wait...) to their new tools and environments. Did they need to be trained on the new technologies? Obviously. However, it was their prior knowledge and experience with a variety of systems that allowed them success.

If we really want to educate "21st Century Learners", we need to focus on creativity and higher-order thinking, regardless of what tools are in use. If the tools themselves become the focus, we might as well start handing out soma.

(posted in the Year of Our Ford 102)